2018 International Forest Industries IFI April May 2018 Digital | Page 6
ISSUE 62
APRIL / MAY 2018
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4 International Forest Industries | APRIL / MAY 2018
EDITOR’S COMMENT
Forestry in the new world
The forestry sector is on the cusp of a major
technology advancement but who will make the breakthrough?
A
conversation ‘around the water cooler’
the other day quite interestingly
turned to the rapid rate of change in
technologies available to industry, in which my
exceptionally tech-savvy colleague, let’s call him
David, referred to this technological change as
the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
I didn’t want to flag myself up as an
ignoramus so continued to nod along but I
couldn’t help wondering: What is the Fourth
Industrial Revolution and why was I not told
there had been so many?
So, I did some research and, for those out
there to whom the genesis of industry has also
been a mystery, I’d like to briefly relate the
industrial revolutions as I now understand them.
The first industrial revolution was, simply,
The Industrial Revolution’, which started early
in the second half of the 18th century and lasted
about 70 years. It brought us the cotton gin and
steam engines, along with a huge uptick in child
labour and the slave trade.
The Second Industrial Revolution –
always the bridesmaid in revolution-centric
conversation – began about 90 years after the
first one started (or just 30 years after it ended)
and delivered mass manufacturing. This started
with steel then moved into other sectors; the
automobile assembly line remains iconic of this
period.
Digitisation was the Third Industrial
Revolution, which forced its way through only
a decade into the current millennium and looks
at more sophisticated software, advancements
in robotics, and mind-bending internet
technologies.
If we’re honest with ourselves, we are yet
to get our heads around the changes hoisted
upon us by the Third Industrial Revolution but
that hasn’t stopped the boffins from already
embarking on the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
The person to most-famously call out
this latest industrial facelift is Professor
Klaus Schwab, who founded and runs the
World Economic Forum and placed the Fourth
Industrial Revolution at the heart of the 2016
WEF annual meeting. The trademarks of this
advancement are mobile supercomputing,
artificial intelligence, and scary biological
modifications of the genetics and brains.
This change, Schwab says, is happening at
an exponential rate, which is the point that got
me thinking.
While the first industrial revolution began
some 1,350 years after the Iron Age ended
and modern human history (as opposed to
protohistory) was born, there was less than a
hundred years between its onset and that of the
second revolution – then roughly the same again
before the third. The period between the third
and fourth was less than five years.
In contrast, many would suggest the forestry
sector has failed to make a industry-shaping
technological breakthrough since mechanisation
of harvesting took hold some 40 years ago,
with the scanning and digitisation of wood
processing perhaps an exception.
This suggests the industry is on the precipice
of a major change. And this change has the
potential to divide the industry.
My technically sophisticated colleague,
David, explained this by pointing to another
colleague of ours – a bald gent, we’ll call Phil,
who sits in the corner and still uses his phone
primarily for making phone calls.
“You see, Phil pretends to be contemporary,”
David began. “He has a smart-phone, he tweets
and has all but abandoned paper currency.
“However, his phone is a Blackberry, his tweet s
are always 24 hours after the fact and he’s
scared of internet banking.”
His point, as far as I could tell, was that
technology was presenting industry with tools
unimaginable even a decade ago. To truly take
advantage and move forward, we must fully
embrace this change, rather pay it lip service to
appear relevant.
As this moment of seismic change
approaches, companies will determine for
themselves if they going to be Davids or Phils.
Enjoy
Chris Cann